• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  Best Settings / Workflow?

  Posted by Dave on April 13, 2007 at 5:13 pm

  Hi. Newbie here. Can someone tell me what the best settings/workflow would be for my situation. I come from Avid Meridian background where I only needed to decide between 1:1 and 2:1 compression.

  FCP 5.1, Intel Mac, AJA Kona LH, ingest from DVCAM via SDI, footage is NTSC SD Anamorphic WS. I use Photoshop, Boris Red 4.1 or the Boris 3D titler for most of my graphics.

  I just edited my first full project on our new FCP and though I love the UI, I’m a little disappointed in the video quality overall, but especially the effects and graphics. Slow-mo’s are strobey, titles and graphics w/ alphas show stairstep edges and stills sometimes have ghost edges on their face details.

  I captured footage and edited using 8bit Uncomprssd, then duplicated my sequence and changed the settings to 10bit Uncomp for final render. It looked better but not much. My FCP newbie colleagues and I would be eternally grateful for some solid schooling in FCP
  workflow. Thanks.

  Rafael Amador replied 19 years, 3 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  Russell Lasson

  April 13, 2007 at 5:36 pm

  First off, I pretty much rely on After Effects for graphics, not FCP. The results are great that way. While I haven’t really latched on to Motion yet, that would also be a great option for titles.

  Do the titles that you’re bringing in have straight or premultilpied alphas? I would suggest only using straight as premultilpied often ands black, jaged thingers around the alpha.

  As far a slo-mo goes, I suggest once again AE 7 or Shake. I’ve had some really, really great results with Shake sometimes, other times I’ve accepted that some footage was never meant to be slowed down.

  -Russ
• 

  Dave

  April 13, 2007 at 6:35 pm

  Thanks. Unfortunately I don’t own AE or Shake so I guess I’m stuck with the slo-mos. I’m pretty sure that the titles are generated with straight alphas but I wouldn’t know where to check on that. Boris vector text has always looked fantastic on my Avids so I thought that would translate to FC.

  I heard that 10-bit Uncompressed would give me better looking graphics and color shading but I’m not sure if it absolutely gives me best quality I can possibly wring out of my DVCAM footage. Can anyone confirm? Thanks again.
• 

  Rafael Amador

  April 14, 2007 at 4:29 am

  Are you rendering in “High precision YUV” and Motion filter quality to BEST?
  Rafael

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